Re: [Caml-list] why is building ocaml hard?

[Malcolm Matalka <mmatalka@gmail.com>]

Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 4:03 AM, Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>
> wrote:
>
>> So how to fix this? In my opinion there are two solutions. You can
>> either have a more intelligent ocamldep (e.g. one that reads in
>> non-local cmi files and uses that information and also tries to
>> interpret all project ml files at once and not file by file - btw, did
>> anybody check whether there is an algorithm that precisely solves the
>> problem?). The other solution path is to mark toplevel modules in the
>> syntax of OCaml (e.g. you'd have to do "open ^M2" is M2 is a toplevel
>> module).
>>
>
> Would an acceptable third option be to simply record the dag explicitly in
> your build file? Working with google's build system [opensourced as bazel:
> http://www.bazel.io/] has given me a great appreciation for simply writing
> out build dependencies manually; sure, it is relatively tedious to have to
> write out the graph yourself rather than have ocamldep figure it out, but
> the time and effort to do so is a small fraction of the overall development
> time of your project, and the reward is a 100% reliable "detection" of the
> build topology.
>
> martin

I've created a build tool called pds (in opam, although a newer version
needs to be released) which is meant to be really easy to go from
nothing to a compiling project that installs.  One problem I found with
the various Ocaml build systems was that they were very flexible, which
can be nice, but also made them more complicated.  I was willing to
sacrifice flexibility for simplicity.

The README for the current version can be found here:

https://bitbucket.org/mimirops/pds/raw/95da73d295d790c82ed900a76880a402b9120b49/README.org


I'm sure there are bugs in there, especially the Makefile it generates,
but I use it on all of my projects with success.  It does rely heavily
on ocamldep to come up with the correct order to compile things within a
project.

/Malcolm